


Narcissus

by terma_archivist



Category: The X-Files
Genre: M/M, sexual situation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-01-01
Updated: 2002-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:09:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26535622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/terma_archivist/pseuds/terma_archivist
Summary: In Ovid's version of the myth of Narcissus mortals and nymphs pursue this beautiful young man but he rejects all. One nymph, Echo, is so distraught by his rejection that she withdraws and fades away until there is nothing left but a plaintive whisper. An earlier version of the story tells of Narcissus growing tired of the affections of another young man named Ameinias. By way of rejection Narcissus sends Ameinias a present. In each case Narcissus is cursed to fall in love with his own reflection. I have taken these ideas and paraphrased the following story.
Relationships: Alex Krycek/Fox Mulder
Collections: TER/MA





	Narcissus

**Author's Note:**

> Note from alicettlg, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [TER/MA](https://fanlore.org/wiki/TER/MA) and was moved to the AO3 as part of the Open Doors project in 2019. I tried to reach out to all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are the creator and would like to claim this work, please contact me using the e-mail address on [the TER/MA collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/terma/profile).  
> TER/MA October 1999 Challenge. OK folks, time to put away the badfic crayons and become the Grrreat Shakespearian Writers we all know we are. In an effort to recover from last month's... ahem... affliction, shall we say, we are going to pull on the masters this month. This month's challenge is to take a well known story—be it from a book, play, movie, fairytale, whatever—and adopt it to fit our duo. I find that everyone has a story that Alex and Fox remind them of, and am surprised to find that everyone's story is different. You can do it tongue in cheek (say, Muldero and Alexette), but I encourage something more thoughtful, a modern retelling of a classic. Please ask if you have any questions, but the nature of the challenge is, as always, very broad and open to individual interpretation.

**Narcissus  
by LeFey**   


Mulder eased himself back onto the couch while Scully strode into the kitchen. 

"If you don't eat something," she threw over her shoulder as she walked, "you're going to fade away." 

Every muscle in his body ached; his head hurt; his bones protested as he moved. Scully thought it was flu. Mulder knew it wasn't the presence of a foreign body but the absence of one that gave him pain. 

It had been nearly a year since Alex disappeared. 

Alex. He still wanted to call him that. He still remembered how good it felt, the intimacy, the trust it implied to call him Alex that last time. They stood in the hallway, Mulder pushing to get the keys to his car. He told him not to worry. Mulder would handle everything. What problems could there be? Alex, his partner, had defended him, corroborated his reports. 

After all this time Mulder was still not sure if he hurt from the betrayal or just the loss of Alex. 

Mulder took the box from behind the couch pillows where he had hidden it from Scully. This was his problem to deal with. He pulled back the flaps and looked at the note once more. It was in the showy, spiked handwriting that was unmistakably Alex's. 

The unwanted memories of him circled Mulder like tormenting specters. The first time haunted him. He wanted to think it was fate. A collision of two forces looking for a source of ignition. He was afraid that it had been a calculated plot. 

He had taken Alex back to his apartment in Georgetown after the 'Augustus Cole' shooting. The neighborhood was a little upscale for a junior agent, but Alex explained he was sub-letting from a friend of a friend. The apartment was even more unusual than the area. Spacious, with a view, one wall of the livingroom was mirrored and a large beveled mirror hung over the fireplace opposite. 

Alex told Mulder there was beer in the refrigerator and excused himself to take a shower. 

He rejoined Mulder a few minutes later, clad in faded gray gym shorts and a high-cut T-shirt. He stopped by the beveled mirror and ran his hand through his damp hair. 

It was almost a shock to see him like this. He had metamorphosed from bland civil servant into a young deity. Mulder felt ready to worship at the sight of him. His hair fell over his forehead in soft strands. He looked vulnerable, and carnally beautiful. His body, no longer hidden by a baggy suit, was long limbed and elegantly powerful. 

He turned to face Mulder. Alex absentmindedly explored his stomach with his hand, the fingers sneaking past the waistband of his shorts. Fox wasn't sure if Alex looked at him or past him at his own reflection in the mirrored wall. Either way, he was distracted and startlingly unselfconscious. After a moment Alex noticed he was being watched and smiled. 

"I really need to do laundry," he explained, his voice low and introspective as he pulled at the front of his T-shirt by way of example. 

Mulder stared for a moment at the flash of pebbled nipple, the cut and swell of Alex's pecs. 

"Never mind," Mulder offered but he wasn't sure who he was trying to put at ease, Alex or himself. "How are you feeling?" He motioned for him to join him on the bronze leather couch. 

Alex padded over and sat down beside him. He leaned forward, his body tense, arms resting on his legs. He studied his reflection in the glass coffee table for a moment before he spoke. 

"I don't know what to say. I can't put a name to it. They train you at the academy for situations like this but nothing prepares you for what it really feels like." He looked up. The mirror over the fireplace was hung at an angle and he could see himself as he sat on the couch. He ran his hands over the sides of his face. His fingers trailed down the length of his body as he spoke. "I feel like I have a mark on me. Something everyone can see. And they know what I did." He hung his head as his hands reached his knees. 

Mulder reached out to him. His own hand settled on Alex's shoulder. Heat radiated from him as Mulder moved his hand over the bow of his back. 

"You did what was necessary. You did the right thing." 

"But he didn't have a gun." 

"He did. I saw it." Mulder lied as he had lied to the detective-in-charge to protect his well-intentioned partner. 

"They just can't find it." 

Mulder continued to run his hand over the young man's back till he felt the tremble, the heaving, as breath caught in his throat and he struggled not to cry. 

Mulder put his arm around him. 

"It's okay, Alex. It's best to let it out." 

Alex leaned close. Tears gathered and glistened on his long dark lashes. 

Mulder hugged him and ran his hand over Alex's shoulder. His fingers strayed under the cap of the T-shirt sleeve and touched warm bare skin. He continued to stroke him, to give consolation. He was comforting him, Mulder told himself, in order to discount his own heat. 

Alex leaned closer. 

Mulder pressed his lips against the soft damp hair near his face as Alex rested his head on Mulder's shoulder. 

"It's okay," he whispered. 

Alex leaned closest to him and in a moment had snaked his body around till he lay against Mulder, pushing him back into the yielding pillows of the couch. His face pressed into Mulder's chest. His arms enfolded him and his fingers clutched at the back of Mulder's shirt. 

Startled, Mulder didn't embrace him for a moment. But, slowly his hands came to rest on Alex's back. His lips touched the damp hair, again. Alex's heat, the soap-sweet fog of his scent from his recent shower surrounded Mulder intoxicating him. He tightened his grip, desperate not to lose this potent Alex experience. 

Alex pushed back after a moment and Mulder let him lean away. He watched Alex as he sniffed back his tears. 

Alex brought his hands to rest on Mulder's chest, toying, for a moment, with a button on Mulder's shirt while he regained his composure. The act might have appeared coy as he lounged against Mulder. But Mulder watched in fascination as Alex's hands moved in a minimal caress on his chest. 

Finally, Alex brought his gaze up to meet Mulder and it was startling. Open, raw, sensuality transformed his features. There was an unguarded wantonness as he licked away a tear that lingered on his upper lip. 

Mulder gasped, not realizing he had been holding his breath. He opened his mouth but no words came. 

Alex spoke instead. "I can see myself in your eyes." He moved close, closer, closest till their lips touched at last and Mulder devoured his mouth. 

Even, now, as he sat with the gift from Alex in his lap, Mulder still wondered if Alex had kissed him or only some embodiment of his own reflection. 

Not that Mulder had ever really cared. There were times he felt jealous, jealous of the way Alex would look at himself, consumed with self-love. Mulder had grown angry and confronted him with his fears, but at the last he accepted their strange relationship for what it gave him. Still, he had never grown used to the times when they made love and he had looked up, lost in lust and sensation, to see Alex gazing at his own image in one of the ever-present mirrors. 

Once he had forced himself to stop, in mid-feast of that delicious young body, when he had noticed Alex watching himself in the bedroom's mirrored closet doors. Alex traced his fingertips over first one nipple and then the other. His lips were parted in breathy flirtation with his own reflection. 

"I think you use me to masturbate," Mulder accused. 

"Don't stop Fox. I need it." Alex continued to trail his fingers over his own skin. 

"It! That's the real truth in this. You don't need me. Just some _thing_ you can use." Mulder became infuriated as he watched Alex gaze drift back to the mirror. 

"Look at me when I'm talking to you!" 

The green eyes, hard as emeralds, fixed an unsettling glare on Mulder. 

"I'm just looking at what turns me on." Alex grazed Mulder's mouth with a hard kiss. "The same thing that turns you on." 

Mulder was certain that Alex studied the play of their kiss, embrace and the exquisite pleasure of their fucking in the mirrors that surrounded them. And that moment of self-voyeurism gave him more pleasure than the acts themselves. But Mulder grew so addicted to the feel of Alex, the sensations he evoked that the reality of what was happening didn't matter. 

Even in Alex's most blatant displays Mulder could find passion. The sight of Alex on all fours as they fucked, like a jade-eyed panther, watching his own arousal in the nearest reflective surface, only served to evoke shameful need in Mulder. 

  
Mulder gave him what he wanted, the means and the freedom to make love to himself. In turn Mulder entered a world of erotic fulfillment, and as he had endured the trials of being Alex's proxy lover, he had been rewarded with the one thing he never expected, loyalty. 

Then, that had been jerked away from him. Alex had betrayed him. Mulder knew the depths of his deception but that did not erase the memory of the moment in the hallway. There was undreamed of perfection when those faceted green eyes looked only at him. He had called him Alex, knowing that Alex had backed him up. 

Mulder took the photograph out of the box. Five by seven, a little grainy, but there was no mistaking who was in it. The picture was of the two of them having a brown bag lunch at the park down the block from the FBI building. They were sitting on the wall surrounding the fountain at the center of the park. Mulder was looking at Alex. Alex was gazing at his reflection in the fountain's pool. 

A neatly typed legend was glued to the base of the picture. 

'This is just the beginning. We have many explicit photos of you and Alex Krycek. They will follow.' 

Mulder let the photo fall beside him on the couch. He reached into the box and pulled out the object nestled in the excelsior at the bottom. The barrel of the gun was inscribed with his name, Fox Mulder. A card was attached to the handle with gold string, like the tag on a Christmas package. Mulder read the words, again, the words printed in _his_ unmistakable handwriting. 

'Do the right thing, Fox. Alex.' 

"Mulder! No!" Scully screamed.

* * *

DISCLAIMER: They belong to Chris Carter, 1013 and Fox Broadcasting   
PAIRING: Mulder/Krycek   
RATING: PG 13 Sexual situation   
ARCHIVE: RatB, Calculated Risks http://denofsin.slashcity.tv/~lefey   
NOTE: October Challenge   
SUMMARY: In Ovid's version of the myth of Narcissus mortals and nymphs pursue this beautiful young man but he rejects all. One nymph, Echo, is so distraught by his rejection that she withdraws and fades away until there is nothing left but a plaintive whisper.  
An earlier version of the story tells of Narcissus growing tired of the affections of another young man named Ameinias. By way of rejection Narcissus sends Ameinias a present.  
In each case Narcissus is cursed to fall in love with his own reflection. I have taken these ideas and paraphrased the following story.   
FEEDBACK: Okay. but you're going to hate me for this one. [email removed]   
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